With deep family roots in the art of woodworking,
it was only natural that Santa Fe woodsmith Ruben Gonzales
would be drawn to the craft. One of his uncles, Elidio
Gonzales, an original practitioner of the WPA-era revival
of Spanish Colonial furniture-making, gained international
fame for his work. As a child, young Ruben spent time in
his famous uncle's studio, El Artisano de Taos, where the
feel of the tools and the smell of sawdust imprinted themselves
upon his senses.
"It all comes naturally," he says. "I have
a certain feel for it. The longer you live, the more you
learn. I learn every day, and I've been doing this for
more than 30 years. I have an eye and the talent that God
gives me. And I'm carrying on a tradition."
Long before he
began making doors for the Santa Fe homes of Hollywood
stars Gene Hackman and Carol
Burnett and selling furniture to Ali McGraw, Ruben Gonzales
enlarged upon his innate sense of tradition by immersing
himself in the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier
and Mies van der Rohe (cq), architects he studied at the
Art Institute of Chicago and the University of New Mexico's
School of Architecture and Planning.
The name of his
Santa Fe shop, La Compania Antigua, characterizes Gonzales'
work. Making use of recycled
materials like 150 year-old oak and pine from old timber-framed
barns as well as recycled New Mexico Ponderosa pine, Gonzales
created his distinctive style of the massive doors with
the "look of antiquity," highlighted with iron hardware,
for which he is best known. "It's very exciting to find
old wood," he says. "Old things have a character to them.
You can see the discoloration, knots and nail holes. They've
had a life, just like a human being. Life scars you. It
puts a mark on you. It's the same thing with wood. And
that's more interesting, not only to me but to my clientele."
Within the timber-cluttered
confines of his workshop, Gonzales maintains an extensive
library where
he finds sources of inspiration. His constant studies lead
him to integrate styles of Russian woodworking, the vernacular
mesquite doors of Mexico, and the geometrically-carved,
Moorish-influenced doors of Morocco
and Spain. Currently,
he is studying
the 1000
year-old tradition of tansu furniture from Japan. His interior
doors sell for $1000 each, while an exterior door may go
for as much as $20,000. In addition to doors, Gonzales
also specializes in highly-collectible, museum-quality
reproductions of historic Northern New Mexico furniture
and windows.
"The
whole process is important to me," Gonzales
says. "It's a journey of discovery, from inception
to the final product. A door is a precision piece of engineering.
And you rely on what the wood gives you. That's where the
talent comes in. You have to know how the wood is going
to act. You must work within those parameters, letting
the wood speak for itself."
For more information, contact Ruben Gonzales
at (505) 471-2971, or e-mail lacompaniaantigua@msn.com.
